


no hay banda

by hypotheticalfanfic



Category: Captain America (2011), Captain America (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Brainwashing, Character Study, Gen, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-14 12:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypotheticalfanfic/pseuds/hypotheticalfanfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which it doesn't happen, because it doesn't happen.</p><p>I *just* noticed I forgot to thank two very dear friends, MM and Cherri, for their help with the Russian in this piece (MM especially, gurl, you are indispensable). Their work made the Russian what it is, and any future works that include Russian will be theirs as well. <333</p>
            </blockquote>





	no hay banda

"Kolja?"

_What's my name? It's not that, it's not that. Something else. That's, my, my name is not a real name, it's a joke, a prozvishche (what does that mean, my friend, what does that word mean?). Help, help, somebody--_

"Kolja, otkroite glaza. Prosnis, prosnis, moi droog."

_That's not my word, my name, that doesn't mean anything, what is he saying?  What are you saying? I don't speak Russian, speak English, French, Spanish, anything, please, don't call me--_

"Kolja?"

_No, no, don't call me that, don't make me go back. Don't put me to sleep, no, listen, can't you hear me? Listen to me, goddammit, I'm not Kolja, I'm not, I'm, I'm--_

The screams stop. The man stills. The man closes his eyes.

And then Kolja opens his eyes. 

"Ty v poryadke?" The other man, the one who had asked and shaken and begged his friend to come back, looks wary for a moment.

"Da, da. Ya prosto ustal." The man who is Kolja stands up, shakes off the dirt and snow he doesn't remember lying in. Notices some bruises he doesn't recall having. Turns to his friend. "Poidem."

Kolja leaves, his friend following behind him. There are people to slaughter and houses to burn, shots to take and bombs to set off. Their business is violence, and business is booming, my friends. 

\---

Kolja falls asleep. 

Someone who is not Kolja wakes up screaming. This happens sometimes. Regrettable, but there's no way around it. Sleep sometimes resets things that need not be reset. The Party man in the ugly suit and too-big shoes comes by sometimes, stands hopping in the snow, says (in his snooty, high-pitched, shivering voice) that the glorious Party is working on it. Once he leaves, shaking like a rabbit, they laugh, the men, and say they'll fix the roads before they fix Kolja's fits. 

The fits are terrible. Scream and scream and scream, he never shuts up. They tried to beat him once to make him stop and he killed four of them before they got him down. They don't try it anymore. They just let him scream until he stops, and when he wakes up the next time he's their friend again.

That is, they mean, he is sort of their friend. He will share his food and blanket with them, he will kill anyone who tries to hurt them, he will build them a fire when they cannot. He has cut off ruined limbs and ripped off enemies' heads and done things no one should be able to. They do not talk about the way his arm looks or the way he speaks, they do not talk about the fits. And in return, he acts as though they are friends. 

Sometimes, when things are quiet, he will smile, lazy and wide and somehow mocking. Kolja is not kind. He is not especially friendly. But when that smile spreads across his odd square face he is, for a moment, handsome. In those times, he looks like a man any of them would be proud to call friend, would be happy to play cards or drink with, to marry a daughter off to. He looks like the man he might have been before he was Kolja, but they do not let themselves think that. It does no one any good, least of all him; the arm and the aim make it clear that whoever he used to be, he is not anymore. 

None of them know who he was before. None of them speak English, which is what the person who's not their friend speaks (screams, babbles, sounds like he's begging for something but they do not know what). They pretend they can't hear him, pretend he's just having a little fit, like Filipok's daughter, like Yuri's great-grandmother. It's not uncommon for people to have fits like this, to scream or shake or act odd for a few minutes. They tell themselves it's just Kolja's bolezn acting up, it'll pass soon enough and he'll be back to them.

\---

The only time Kolja talks to other people (other people who do not end up dead) is when they're in France, which is every few months or so. What happens is, the person they need will ask, "Vy govorite po frantsuzski?" with a stammer and a bad accent. And then Kolja will turn his head stiffly and spill out French like he was born to it, and they will finish their business and leave.

Kolja won't speak French otherwise. Vasily, who also speaks a little French (and a little German, and a bit of Spanish, and enough of a few other tongues to get a girl in bed and a plate of food) can't goad him into it. He says, when Kolja's not with them, that the man speaks with an odd touch, an accent Vasily doesn't know but is sure is not Russian or Czech or Polish. "Yest li u negobritanskii aktsent?" Filipok asks once, hushed in case someone should hear, but Vasily shakes his head. It's something else.

If any of them spoke English, they would know, but they don't, so I will tell you instead: when Kolja speaks French, he has a pronounced Brooklyn accent. When he speaks Russian or Czech, he does not. In those tongues, he says nothing unexpected, uses very little slang, never varies from a script he seems to keep in his head. He speaks them like a textbook, like a robot, like a recording.

\---

Dream dream dream and when he swims up out of them there is nothing clinging to his limbs, nothing at all, nyet, nothing, no. 

And there are no cobwebs in his eyes, no shadows over his vision, and he does not see the blonde-and-blue boy he loved in an alleyway and the half-broken door to a rickety walk-up and a grandmother's pastel living room with the radio he'd gotten working with two bits of wire and a ball of thread, no, he doesn't, not at all, not even a little bit.

He doesn't speak English. He doesn't have a Brooklyn accent when he doesn't speak English, not even the hint of one, and he certainly doesn't cry out a name when he's screaming in Brooklyn-heavy-thick English, not ever, not once. 

It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen, and he doesn't remember it happening, and the men who surround him don't shut their ears to it because it doesn't happen. And Kolja is never not Kolja, ever, not ever at all not even a tiny amount, no, nyet. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001), specifically this scene ([youtube link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWKmDrpjzXQ)), which will mean a lot more and also a lot less if you've seen the movie before.
> 
> The Russian in here is courtesy of my darling amazing friends MM and cherri, and roughly goes:
> 
> "Kolja, otkroite glaza. Prosnis, prosnis, moi droog." = Kolja, open your eyes. Wake up, wake up, my friend.  
> "Ty v poryadke?" = Are you ok?  
> "Da, da. Ya prosto ustal." = Yeah, yeah. I'm just tired.  
>  "Poidem." = Let's go.  
> bolezn = sickness  
> "Vy govorite po frantsuzski?" = Do you speak French?  
>  "Yest li u negobritanskii aktsent?" = Does he have a British accent?


End file.
